The Jaguar XE is the premium sedan for those who are bored of German cars. It's also Jaguar's most important car in decades.

Jaguar has become more independent since Tata bought it from Ford in 2008, but the departure also meant they had to develop a brand new platform and engine family using a clean sheet of paper and spending billions of dollars. The resulting XE therefore must be a success.

In order to achieve that, the British created a scalable architecture and drivetrain using lightweight (and 75% recycled) aluminum. The new 2.0 four-cylinder engines and the low weight will make the XE highly efficient, but trying to guess US mpg figures at this point is pretty much impossible. What's for sure is that in Europe, diesel XEs are aiming for 75 (UK) mpg combined.

The XE (and all future Jags) will be rear-wheel drive with optional all-wheel drive. The most powerful version will also get the supercharged 3-liter V6 from the F-Type, but we wouldn't be surprised to see a supercharged V8 in there later on targeting the fastest Audis, Mercs and BMWs, not to mention whatever rear-wheel drive super saloon Alfa Romeo is cooking up at the moment.

As far as the suspension goes, it has a compact double-wishbone suspension at the front and a multilink setup at the rear, but I guess all you want to read about at this point are the gadgets. The XE has a lot of those too.

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As well as a very advanced head up display, the car will come with smartphone apps that can do stuff like start your XE remotely, Wi-Fi for everybody in the cabin and an 8-inch touchscreen which you apparently won't have to touch since voice control will take care of all your needs. The XE will also be extremely hard to steal.